Cert: 18 | ★★★✩✩
In 1996 Wes Craven’s original Scream movie managed to rewrite the whole slasher movie rules all the way paying homage to the genre’s most popular offerings. Craven’s film was not only genuinely scary but also commendably self-aware, funny and hugely entertaining. Since then, there have been three more films in the franchise released with varying degrees of success. Twenty five years later, a fifth movie has been made starring three of the original cast members: Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell.
Directed by filmmaking duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the action takes place 11 years after the last instalment. A new killer has emerged. Sisters Sam (Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega) Carpenter find themselves in the crosshairs of the new perpetrator. Luckily, help comes in the shape of some old faces who, understandably, want to put a stop to the murders in the small town once and for all.
Writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick present a heavily populated, muddled but undeniably funny screenplay which often feels as though someone had swallowed a horror movie handbook and then proceeded to regurgitate it for two hours straight, but this is not to say that the film isn’t without merit or moments of pure, unadulterated fun. While the original Scream movie was, perhaps, the first in the genre to play with its own folklore, this latest instalment has taken self-reflexivity to a whole new level of sniggering, know-it-all,smug repartee.